


0.3 | The City

by hummingbear



Category: Original Work
Genre: <3, Additional Warnings Apply, Angst, Anxiety, Backstory, Blood, Character Death, Comfort, Confessions, Crimes & Criminals, Crying, Dark, Death, Drama, Enemies, Falling In Love, Feelings, Feels, Flashbacks, Fluff, Friendship, Future, Gen, Gore, Hatred, Horror, Human, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, I Don't Even Know, I'm Sorry, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Injury, LATER, LGBTQ Themes, Language, Loss, Love, Manipulation, Mental Health Issues, Mystery, Not Really Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pain, Panic, Past, Plot, Poetry, Relationship(s), Sad, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Secrets, Suspense, Team, Teenagers, Tension, Torture, Tragedy, Trauma, Violence, Weapons, Weather, You'll know it when you see it, and likely won't even be mentioned much if at all, at some point, bearing in mind the characters have all been treated awfully, btw about the second tag, but not at all explicit i promise, but you should be pretty safe for now, c:, dw about it cause its just part of a backstory, enjoyyyyyyyy, except not really, heavy in description basically, however, it's like my others, it's there just in case, its just in case, just sort of, kind of?, later on, not really - Freeform, so expect a lot of triggering content in the future, though not quite yet, trigger warning, until i get around to giving out all the details on their backstories
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 13:46:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14812493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hummingbear/pseuds/hummingbear
Summary: rain wet his hair, the water dripping further down his face like a gargantuan map of tears. But he wasn’t crying. He was just cold.a nauseous sensation began to pool in his gut.through the swimming crowds of faceless figures and their uniform, rain-splattered black umbrellas, he could sense something else. something foreign.the flooded city was no longer comforting, the rain no longer his only companion, and this unsettled him.for beyond the fog of senseless swaying bodies, a new figure stood.he wasn't alone.





	0.3 | The City

**Author's Note:**

> she got you some new reading bops welc...
> 
> outside- tender  
> alternate world- son lux  
> acid rain- lorn
> 
> guess what readers (wherever you are lol), these songs actually fit to the concept/theme/thing, for once, though their significance to the series might be a little vague to start with, because we all know how confusing this bs is ha...
> 
> some of these might also be reused in other parts of this series-thing, so look out for that, if you happen to be even remotely interested, I would be very grateful :)
> 
> yeah, so, here you are, enjoyyyyyy <3

He watched with blank eyes as umbrellas waded through the rainy city streets, attached to faceless people at the hip. Rivulets of water drizzled down the shiny black material, like how they did running laps down the slanted planes of car windshields and their darkened windows. Wet coats and busy people pushed past him with their shoulders where he stood, unmoving, in the centre of the bustling street. Everyone, or at least those brushing past his frozen-solid figure, seemed to be moving in the opposite direction to which he was facing, despite still not being able to make out their blank faces below their hoods and hats. Water soaked him through the bone, his ragged t-shirt and shorts providing no barrier at all from the sheets of rainwater, the onslaught of droplets finding his eyelashes and resting upon them until he couldn’t quite make out anything but colourful spotted lighting of neon signs and car headlights past the blurred visor of water he’d been gifted with without having first asked for it. The white half of the stripes on his t-shirt had turned a translucent dreary grey colour, his bare feet aching with cold.  
The people were moving as if they were a single unit: a mass of black and pale alabaster faces, their uniform emptiness unsettling his nerves. This has little effect on him, however; he was too numb with the cold.  
He stood stock still, afraid that any movement he made might nullify the obliviousness this crowd seemed to have to hum, like twitching a single muscle or breathing too deeply would alert them, set them all on him like a pack of wild dogs. Not willing to risk it, he remained still. He would’ve been quite content to remain in his petrified state, statue-like in all but his eyes, which darted from one faceless head to the next, and his hands, where his fingers twitched in obvious discomfort and slight unease. Rain wet his hair, the water dripping further down his face like a gargantuan map of tears. But he wasn’t crying. He was just cold.

But then, accompanying the frigidity that tapped incessantly at his bare limbs in a taunting, prickling manner, a nauseous sensation began to pool in his gut. The flowers of anxiety wasted no time in blooming within him, their branches spreading out in a way he was all too familiar with feeling. They would begin to grow when he was thrown into one of those many, listless rooms for an hour or so, to be at the mercy of whoever had paid the most. Their petals brightened regrettably when, for the second time in his life, arguably more so than the first now that he knew what he might be faced with, a needle entered through the flesh of his neck and a blindfold was tied around his drooping eyes, hands held behind his back... he remembered the flowers growing particular tall and wide in that moment, reaching up into his lungs. He remembered suffocating on their roots, resigned in hopelessness to what seemed to be his permanent fate. He remembered feeling so awfully cold.  
He also experienced the growth of the blossoms during any nauseating encounter with the man who sent for him to be ripped from the streets, from his home, from the good life he thought he’d been promised with having found himself in the Secondary with his stepfather. That man had sent chills roving up and down his spine, anxiety spiking alongside his fear, this time the floral inhabitants of his heart reaching his throat until he couldn’t speak without stuttering. This man’s face, a personal visit from him, never spelt good news for either himself or any of the other boys trapped in that hellhole with him. He’s sure there were girls, too, but they were very rarely, if ever, in contact. It’s the domineering hubris people like that man have that disgusts him, causes bile to rise in his throat, while they sneer at those who’re unable to dislodge themselves from their tyrannical command.  
That’s why, when scanning the waltzing crowd for an opening to escape through some few seconds later, he felt the begin petals bubble over again.  
Because someone else had stopped, too. And he recognised that someone almost immediately. The shock caused him to shake. He stumbled back some, into one of the faceless people nudging past without noticing him. He tried to turn around and stutter out an apology of sorts to cover for his fearful reactions, but quickly found himself frozen again when the faceless head was turned towards him. He quickly looked away, tearing his gaze from the pale expanse of blurred skin, only to find that each and every one of those pale faces had stopped to turn and set their eerie gaze on him. Everything had frozen. He felt eyes boring into the back of his head, his neck prickling with the telltale sense of being watched. He saw the person again, the one he recognised, the presence shaking his defiance. The man looked at him from across the street, amongst the blank faces, with an umbrella like all the rest. There was something glinting in his eye, a smirk painted white across his face. Despite the umbrella, water drizzled down his face. He swallowed, trying his best to stand his ground.

But his blood runs with ice at the sight, and once again, he feels cold.

Because this is the man that had sentenced him to everything he suffered through these last few months, before they’d gotten him out, that had exposed him knowingly to the torture that was one of the branches of his line of ‘business’, in order to uphold the supporting pillars of his immovably grand empire. Organised crime wasn’t something you could escape when living outside of the protective glass walls of the Dome- not even in the Secondary. It was still just the overflow, after all. The money without the status. At least that was one more than the tertiary would ever have. But that didn’t mean they were immune to people like this man. Sometimes, it felt like no one was, but that was the burden of living without the protection everyone else seemed too accustomed to to appreciate. That was a state of living he couldn’t afford to want, for despite his relatively lucky situation previously, something with more power than he would ever have had decided he wasn’t deserving of it. This man was purely the messenger. The executioner.

And now, as the man took a step towards him through the idle statues, he took a step back. He was shivering, and this time not just with the cold. It was all he could do not to scramble away in a desperate attempt just to escape, to run and not stop running until he physically wasn’t able to anymore. However, for some reason entirely foreign to him, he couldn't bring himself to move any further.

Because, from out of the corner of his eye, another person entered his field of vision, and even before he could see their face, he knew exactly who it was.

He weaved his way gracefully through the sea of bodies, and he watched with awe as the bright blonde of his hair disappeared and reappeared from behind the masses of blank faces and black umbrellas like he hadn't even seen them to begin with. His eyes flashed blue, and he moved through the waves of silent faceless shapes until he was standing next to the man. They were a similar height, the new entry slightly shorter, though obviously also much younger- perhaps around his own age.

He felt drawn to him; the new presence had so easily gone to stand side by side with the most dangerous man of their generation. And in some irresistible, sudden pull of magnetism, he found himself not backing away, but moving closer.

He watched him closely: studied the familiar angles of his face, the expanse of his tanned skin visible above the lose collar of his crisp linen shirt, the fact he was the only other person among them all that stood without the black uniform of the umbrella. Like himself, the boy was exposed to the battling torrent of sheet rain hammering at them where they were closed in by not just the empty half-formed shadows of non-existent people, but by the towering grey walls of the city buildings that kept them trapped inside, like a confined prison cell without a roof. All they could see of the ceiling was the ever-darkening blanket of clouds swarming over each other like waves on grainy black beach.

And yet the boy remained completely dry.

His hair wasn't wet, like his own was, which continued to bleed cold water into his eyes. No, the boy was untouched by the storm.

The man leant into him, whispering into his ear behind a rough-skinned, scar-stained hand. All the while he took tentative steps towards the two, his shirt hanging off of one of his shoulders with the weight of the water it’d collected in its thin material. He could feel it dripping from his hair to his neck to his collarbones, where it pooled, before overflowing and falling even further to his chest, where the heat of recognition burned in his heart.

The feeling caught him by surprise: warm, hot even, and glowing with a strength that matched the kind the boy was emanating.

As he watched him, the rain unable to touch his skin regardless of its desperate attempts, he noticed how unlike he was to anyone he’d ever seen before. It was only him, bright-skinned against the dreary backdrop of grey, light against the force of the hungry dark, the only source of heat within the heart of the cold, cold, wet rain.

The hand retreated from the boy’s ear before the man did. He was much closer to them now, as he watched with curiosity as the first sign emotion flashed across his face. There was confusion there, disgust maybe, but that morphed into something else entirely when the boy’s eyes flitted over towards him, and locked with his own.

Swimming amongst the grey-blue tendrils, warped like smoke around the irises of his eyes, he saw a piercing spark of understanding, which was quickly swallowed by his pupils as they widened, making reading his emotions that little bit harder.

But the dread was ever present in face. He swallowed, as did the boy, with their eyes still locked intently on each other’s. There was an unspoken warning there, one that set off the alarm bells in his head.

 

His fists clenched at his side, the hem of his soaked shirt bunched within their grasp, and for the first time since the boy had entered his vision, he took a shaky step backwards, and then another, until he was running.

 

The heat disappeared, replaced by dread, and he was once again cold.

 

 

 

~~~

 

 

 

“Shoot him.”

**Author's Note:**

> so...
> 
> I hope you found that interesting, or something along those lines c:
> 
> please, feel free to leave feedback in the comments cause I would greatly appreciate that, positive, negative or neutral, because at the end of the day all I want is to improve my writing :) actually, as well as that being a constant goal of mine, I'd love to write a book someday, fun fact
> 
> and I guess there's a starting point for everyone, so here I am x
> 
> also, for reading,
> 
> thank
> 
> ...
> 
> (xxx)
> 
> ...
> 
> (<3)


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